1992: An aid agency predicts disaster if the United States sends a large military force to Somalia; Britain's Queen Elizabeth II announces she would start paying taxes on her personal income and take her children off the national payroll.

1993: A US diplomat is kidnapped by Yemeni tribesmen. Government officials negotiate for his release in the first known kidnapping of a diplomat in faction-ridden Yemen.

1996: Supporters of President Alexander Lukashenko break away from Belarus' Parliament, setting up their own assembly.

1998: The Supreme Court of Canada rules that authorities at elementary and secondary schools have the right to search a student without first obtaining a search warrant.

1999: A Norwegian high-speed passenger ferry carrying 85 people sinks in the North Sea off western Norway, killing 16 people.

2000: Florida certifies George W. Bush as the winner of the state's electoral votes for the US presidential election. US Vice-President and Democratic rival Al Gore challenges the decision.

2001: Former French intelligence chief General Paul Aussaressess says in testimony that the orders he issued to torture and kill prisoners during the Algerian independence war were justifiable acts of duty.

2002: Attorney Gloria Allred asks California authorities to investigate singer Michael Jackson because of news videotape of the star holding his baby son over a fourth-floor railing at a hotel in Germany.

2009: Dubai is now so swamped in debt that it is asking for a six-month reprieve on paying its bills -- causing a drop on world markets and raising questions about Dubai's reputation as a magnet for international investment.

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